Builder Profile: Electro-Harmonix

An assortment of late-’70s Mike Matthews creations (left to right): a Deluxe Electric
Mistress, a Muff Fuzz, and a Polyphase. Photos by Tom Hughes

Pi in the Sky—and Everywhere Else
If there’s one pedal that EHX is most known
for, it’s the Big Muff Pi. Myer and Matthews
came up with its design in 1969. “When I
came out with the Big Muff, I spent a lot
of time shaping the cascading gain stages,
which gave a super-long sustain. I also
worked a lot with the filters to get the notes
to sound less raspy and more sinusoidal
and smooth. That’s how the Big Muff got its
long, violin-like sustain, because the filters
filtered out the harsh cross products.”

From there, the Big Muff Pi sold like, er,
hotcakes. “I brought the first ones up to
Manny’s Music and Henry [Goldrich], the
owner at that time, told me that Hendrix
just bought one,” Matthews recalls. “Carlos
Santana bought a Big Muff mail order. He
sent in a check—a Carlos Santana check,
y’know, with his drums and bongos on it—
and Carlos Santana stationery. We still have
copies of that here.”

At that point, it seems the floodgates had
opened fully—both crazy product names
and off-the-wall design ideas were flowing
freely. “One of the other ideas I had around
that time was a guitar that had a speaker
that was in a ceramic case that screwed
into the guitar. So the guitar output would
go to an amp, but part of it would bleed
into a separate amp that would feed the
signal back into the ceramic speaker that
would give you some actual real feedback
right into the guitar.”

As for the funky names on Electro-
Harmonix gear, the story behind them is
predictably circuitous. “What happened
with the Big Muff is that, we had this
treble booster, our bass booster, and then
we had a fuzz. It had a muffled sound, so
I called it the Muff Fuzz. Later on, when
we developed the superior distortionsustainer
unit, because we already had the
Muff, I called it the Big Muff. That’s how
it came about—it evolved. But I also like
those names with a double meaning. And
the Bad Stone was just trying to play off
the name of the Rolling Stones and Bob
Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone” hit. I came
up with most all the names.”

With Hendrix and Santana using Big Muffs
at the height of their powers, it’s no wonder
the devices did so well. “We were building
3000 Big Muffs a month,” Matthews says.
“We quickly followed it with some variations.
We had a little treble booster, a bass
booster, a Little Muff . . . and there wasn’t
that much competition.”

But that didn’t last long. “MXR came along
and they were a big competitor. We battled.
They came on big with the Phase 90,
and we were really working hard to come
out with a phase shifter. As we were working
on it, the problem was that there was
some feedback. But that feedback turned
out sounding good, so we captured it. You
could have regular phasing or, with the
flick of a switch, you could have feedback
and get this really edgy sound. The feedback
would sharpen the notes. A lot of our
competitors, they hate noise. Anything that
has noise has to be taken out. They’ll work
their asses off filtering out every ounce of
noise to the point where they filter out the
feeling. I mean, playing music is really . . .
it’s getting out feelings. So I always want to
leave the feeling in.”

Left: The top row of this Small Stone collection shows left to right) a mid-’70s model with minimalist graphics, a late-’70s version with large orange lettering, early-’80s
and mid-’90s models with blocky black-and-orange graphics, and a recent Small Stone Nano, while the bottom row features three Electro-Harmonix/Sovtek co-branded
units built in Russia and a US-made late-’70s Bad Stone. Photo courtesy pedalarea.com. Middle: A late-’70s Electro-Harmonix Echo Flanger. Photo by Tom Hughes. Right: An early-’90s Mike
Matthews-branded Soul Kiss wah-type effect. It features a plastic case with a strap clip and is controlled with the mouthpiece coiled next to it. Photo by Tom Hughes.

A Fistful of Firsts to Finance Immortality
For decades now, stompboxes from a plethora
of manufacturers have been available in
such variety that we take them for granted.
But Matthews says it was his company that
pioneered distortion, delay, modulation,
and even sampler pedals. “The old Electro-
Harmonix, we had great sounds—we were
very innovative. We were first with a lot of
things. I mean, we were first with a flanger
that wasn’t something you created for the
studio. We were first with analog delay.
We were first with low-cost samplers—the
Instant Replay and Super Replay. I took
those to Ikutaro Kakehashi, Roland’s founder.
He liked the technology. He flew me to
Japan and wanted me and David [Cockerell,
designer of the Small Stone] to be part of
Roland. But his chief engineer thought they
could do it themselves, so I made a deal
with Akai. Kakehashi told me it was his biggest
mistake, because Akai samplers ruled
the industry.”

While Matthews may come across as pretty
bold, he’s also honest about some of the
company’s early setbacks. “Instead of really
focusing on the chassis and the mechanical
construction, we moved on to the next
thing. A lot of the early pedals were flimsy
and broke down easily. That was not our
bag, at that time. That was back in the ’60s
and ’70s. Now, of course, our products are
built rock-solid.”

Matthews continued his overall quest for
immortality in the early 1970s with a trip
to Haiti and dalliances with the powers of
mental telepathy. Fortunately, the quest
also involved making effects pedals. Lots
and lots of effects pedals.

“In order to whip death, I had to grow the
business,” Matthews explains. “Double it in
size every year. If we missed that goal and
only grew by 50 percent, we’d have to make
it up the next year. Again, it was back to
my ex-wife and this goal—it was absurd—to
whip death in my own lifetime. I was always
interested in expanding, in coming out with
more stuff so I could make more money, hire
more engineers, and have a great scientific
think tank that would help me eventually
whip death.” Considering the time period,
it’s easy to assume this exceedingly lofty
goal was all some sort of flower-power pipe
dream. But Matthews says, “I wasn’t a hippie,
I was a loner. I had long hair, but I wasn’t
really in any group. I was just into making
money, having fun, playing in the group.”

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